Page:Rowland--The Mountain of Fears.djvu/24

  the short seas into a flat track of phosphoresence, and against the pale background I saw a tremor of some sort shake Leyden's square shoulders, and it seemed to me that his voice was slightly breathless.

The Mountain of Fears,' so our Papuans called it, and threw down their burdens at the edge of the stream and refused point-blank to stir another step; more than that, they implored us to go no farther ourselves, and a girl given to MacFarlane by a chief threw her arms around the knees of the rough old Gael and wailed like a stricken soul. An odd thing, that, Doctor, this cannibal girl given to the Scotchman a month before by this chief, to whom MacFarlane had given a harmonica on which he had first rendered 'The Bonnie, Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond' in a manner which should, by right, have got him speared. The girl had fancied him, slaved for him, followed him everywhere like a dog, and had ended by softening him to—such an extent that he ceased to curse and his manner was [ 8 ]